Reviews for Remarks

The average rating for Remarks based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-12 00:00:00 Declan Butler Cobb is a marvelous writer. The section about his travels in the Grand Canyon needs to be read by every person who likes both travel and humor, because it's hysterically funny. Cobb comes across in some ways like an early Bill Bryson. Highly recommended. Here's a quote from the book: "All over this part of Arizona they tell you the story of the lady from the southern part of the state--she was a school teacher and the story has become an epic--who went down Bright Angel one morning and did not get back until two o'clock the following morning; and then she came against her will in a litter borne by two tired guides, while two others walked beside her and held her hands; and she was protesting at every step that she positively could not and would not go another inch; and she was as hysterical as a treeful of chickadees; her hat was lost, and her glasses were gone, and her hair hung down her back, and altogether she was a mournful sight to see. Likewise the natives will tell you the tale of a man who made the trip by crawling round the more sensational corners upon his hands and knees; and when he got down he took one look up to where, a sheer mile above him, the rim of the canyon showed, with the tall pine trees along its edge looking like the hairs upon a caterpillar's back, and he announced firmly that he wished he might choke if he stirred another step. Through the miraculous indulgence of a merciful providence he was down, and that was sufficient for him; he wasn't going to trifle with his luck. He would stay down until he felt good and rested, and then he would return to his home in dear old Altoona by some other route. He was very positive about it. There were two guides along, both of them patient and forbearing cowpunchers, and they argued with him. They pointed that there was only one suitable way for him to get out of the canyon, and that was the way by which he had got into it. "The trouble with you fellows," said the man, "is that you are too dad-blamed technical. The point is that I'm here, and here I'm going to stay." "But," they told him, "you can't stay here. You'd starve to death like that poor devil that some prospectors found in that gulch yonder--turned to dusty bones, with a pack rat's nest in his chest and a rock under his head. You'd just naturally starve to death." "There you go again," he said, "importing these trivial foreign matters into the discussion. Let us confine ourselves to the main issue, which is that I am not going back. This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I," he said, or words to that effect. So insisting, he sat down, putting his own firm base against the said rock, and prepared to become a permanent resident. He was a grown man and the guides were less gentle with him than they had been with the lady school teacher. They roped his arms at the elbows and hoisted him upon a mule and tied his legs together under the mule's belly, and they brought him out of there like a sack of bran--only he made more noise than any sack of bran has ever been known to make. Available at Open Library:

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-25 00:00:00 Laura Kincaid I had literally just finished reading Mark Twain's Roughing It when I stumbled upon this similarly named book by one of America's most recognisable writers from the first half if the 20th century. Surely the title wasn't arrived at by accident? It wasn't. Roughing It De Luxe is both a copy and a homage to Twain's journey West fifty years previously, only the earlier humourist had to go by stagecoach, there was no railway back in the 1860's. Cobb was well aware of the comparative modesty of his venture, as well as the inferior nature of the train to the coach when it came to immersing yourself in the scenery. However, there were benefits: 'Some objected to the plains because they were flat and plainlike, and some to the mountains because of their exceedingly mountainous aspect; but on one point we all agreed - on the uniform excellence of the dining-car service.' This is only a short collection, a handful of newspaper articles about his vists to the Gran Canon, Los Angeles, San Francisco and just south of the border with Mexico. Twain hung around West for seven years after he got there. Cobb's humour was very much in the style of his predecessor though. The blowhard and the tall tale interest him at least as much as the beautiful climate and the tall mountains. I have noticed that one of the pieces about a mythical (i.e. made up) and malevolent creature called the Hydrophobic Skunk can be listened to online via a recorded narration. The nasty little fella supposedly resides at the bottom of the Gran Canon but is really nothing more than a wind-up aimed at tourists. When in Tia Jauna he tried mescal for the first time. I liked his description of the experience: 'It goes down easily enough - that is not the trouble - but as soon as it goes down you have the sensation of having swallowed a comet.'